In Patients Experiencing Biochemical Failure After Radiotherapy, Pretreatment Risk Group and PSA Velocity Predict Differences in Overall Survival and Biochemical Failure-Free Interval

Abstract

Purpose: To characterize the demographics and survival outcomes of localized prostate cancer patients who developed biochemical failure (BF) according to a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) nadir plus 2 ng/mL. Methods and Materials: We identified 375 prostate cancer patients who had undergone external beam radiotherapy without androgen deprivation therapy but with sufficient PSA data to study PSA kinetics. Of these patients, we identified 82 with BF. The pretreatment PSA velocity was calculated for each patient. Results: For the BF cohort, 26% were low-risk and 74% were intermediate- or high-risk patients. Of the 82 BF patients, 16 (20%) were noted to have both low-risk disease and a pretreatm..